You may know the Eiffel Tower as one of the most famous man-made monuments in the world, and you'd be absolutely right! Read on to learn about the history of the great Eiffel Tower.

    Travelers from around the world flock(蜂拥)to Paris, France, to visit the Eiffel Tower, making it the most visited paid monument in the entire world! In fact, in 2010, the Eiffel Tower welcomed its 250 millionth visitor!

The history of the Eiffel Tower

    The Eiffel Tower was named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the famous monument. Construction began in January of 1887 and was completed in only two years. Their plan was to finish the tower in time to be the entrance arch for the World's Fair in 1889. This fair celebrated the 100^th anniversary of the French Revolution, which took place from 1789 to 1799.

The height competition

    Located on the Champs de Mars, the tower is the tallest structure in Paris. It was the tallest man-made structure in the world for 41 years until the Chrysler Building in New York surpassed(超过) it. Then the spire(塔尖) on the top of the tower was added, raising its height to 17 feet taller than the Chrysler Building. It is now 1,063 feet tall! There are two replicas(复制品) of the Eiffel Tower in the world: a half scale model at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas and a full-sized monument of a similar (but not exact) design in Tokyo, Japan.

Three shades of wonder

    Some pictures make the Eiffel Tower look like a dark iron color. But it is, in fact, bronze. Not only that, but the tower is actually painted three different shades to make it appear even taller: darkest on the bottom and lightest on the top.

    At the beginning of the century there was a big farm called Hollywood Ranch. It was near Los Angeles in California. A few years later Hollywood was one of the famous places of the world. From 1910s to the 1950s Hollywood was the film center of the world. Every family knew the names of its film stars Charlie Chaplin, Grete Garbo, Bergman and hundreds more.

    The reason why people went to Hollywood to make films was the sun. At first people made films in New York on the east coast of the United States. But then they heard about Los Angeles where there are 350 days of sun every year. As they made all the films by sunlight, the west coast was a much better place to work.

    Also near Hollywood you can find mountains and sea and desert. They did not have to travel far to make any kind o film

    When TV became popular in the 1960s, Hollywood started making films for television. Then in 1970s they discovered people still went to cinema to see big expensive films. After twenty years they are still making films in Hollywood and people watch them all over the world.

    Three-quarters of a million tourists flock to the primitive, white beaches every year—but this booming industry has come at a price. When foreigners left the government struggling to cope with a stream of rubbish, their answer was to turn one of these islands into a dumping ground. Clouds of sharp, poisonous smoke rising from open fires, piles of rubbish made up of plastic bottles, crisp packets and consumer junk. It's a far cry from the white sands, crystal-clear waters and gently swaying palm trees that we associate with the Maldives（马尔代夫）, the beautiful paradise island holiday destination set in the Indian Ocean.

    Of its 200 inhabited islands, which are spread across an area of 35,000 square miles, 99 are dedicated resorts. Three-quarters of a million tourists visit every year—more than double the domestic population. Of these, over 100,000 travel from the UK. The capital, Malé, is four times more densely populated than London. Given these facts, it's hardly surprising that the Maldives on which has a waste disposal problem.

    What you are seeing here is a view of the Maldives on which no honeymooners will ever fix eyes. Four miles west of Malé is the country's dumping ground, Thilafushi—or Rubbish Island as it has simply become known.

    The country dumps upwards of 330 tons of rubbish on the island every day, a figure attributed largely to the tourist industry on which the chain of islands relies. Each visitor generates 3.5 kg of waste per day.

    Now, the government of the Maldives has banned the dumping of waste on the island, which is too late, due largely to an increase in the number of waste boats “fly-tipping”（非法倾倒）directly into the sea, fed up with waiting seven hours or more to offload their cargo.

    A Chinese team claimed victory at an international e-sports（电子竞技）championship held in Paris on Sunday.

    Royal Never Give Up beat South Korean team Dragon X 3-1 to lift the crown at the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational 2018. It marked the first time in 1,106 days that a South Korean team had been defeated by a team from elsewhere at a major international League of Legends tournament（锦标赛）.

    League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena video game that was launched in 2009 and rapidly built a following among members of the competitive gaming community. The tournament in Paris featured teams from 13 countries and regions competing for cash and a place in the global rankings.

    Royal Never Give Up entered the contest fresh from their victory at the spring season of the Tencent League of Legends Pro League, the top level of China's professional League of Legends league system. Their win in Paris was largely owing to star player Jian Zihao, aka Uzi. “I've been trying to win this title for six years now,” Jian said on stage following the victory. “I can't imagine I'm standing here with this trophy. I'm super excited for this moment.” Royal Never Give Up's victory has boosted confidence in China's ability to win at major international e-sports events.

    E-sports' popularity has ballooned in recent years, with the International Olympic Committee scheduled to meet in July to further discuss the possibility of including e-sports in future Olympic Games. According to Penguin Intelligence's 2017 China Game Industry Report, released in June, the annual market value of China's e-sports sector reached 20 billion yuan ($3.13 billion) in 2016, generated by gamers' spending, copyright distribution, merchandising and e-commerce. The number of registered online gamers jumped to 220 million in 2017 from 170 million the year before.

    I'm sitting in my kitchen in London, trying to figure out a text message from my brother. He lives in our home country of Germany. We speak German to each other, a language that's rich in odd words, but I've never heard this one before: fremdschämen. I'm too proud to ask him what it means. I know that eventually, I'll get it. Still, it's slightly painful to realize that after years of living abroad, my mother tongue can sometimes feel foreign.

    Most long-term migrants know what it's like to be a slightly rusty(生疏的) native speaker. The process seems obvious: the longer you are away, the more your language suffers. But it's not quite so straightforward.

    In fact, the science of why, when and how we lose our own language is complex and often different to what we think. It turns out that how long you've been away doesn't always matter. Socializing with other native speakers abroad can worsen your own native skills. And emotional factors like trauma(精神创伤) can be the biggest factor of all.

    It's not just long-term migrants who are affected, but to some extent anyone who picks up a second language. The minute you start learning another language, the two systems start to compete with each other, says Monika Schmid, a linguist at the University of Essex.

    Schmid is a leading researcher of language attrition, a growing field of research that looks at what makes us lose our mother tongue. In children, the phenomenon is somewhat easier to explain since their brains are generally more flexible and adaptable. Until the age of about 12, a person's language skills are relatively easy to change. Studies on international adoptees have found that even nine-year-olds can almost completely forget their first language when they are removed from their country of birth.

    But in adults, the first language is unlikely to disappear entirely except in extreme circumstances. For example, Schmid analyzed the German of elderly German-Jewish wartime refugees(难民) in the UK and the US. The main factor that influenced their language skills wasn't how long they had been abroad or how old they were when they left. It was how much trauma they had experienced as victims. Those who left Germany in the early days of Nazi occupation, before the worst violence, tended to speak better German – despite having been abroad the longest. Those who left later, tended to speak German with difficulty or not at all.

    "It seemed very clearly a result of this trauma", says Schmid. "Even though German was the language of childhood, home and family, it was also the language of painful memories." The most traumatised refugees had held them back. As one of them said: I feel that Germany betrayed me. America is my country, and English is my language.

5 books I loved in 2018

By Bill Gates

    A great read is the perfect gift and I think everyone could use a few more books in their lives. My book list covers various topics, including an autobiography on learning throughout a life, a deep search on autonomous weapons (武器), a thriller about the fall of a once­promising company and a guide about meditation (冥想)­there's something for everyone.

    The Head space Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness, by Andy Puddicombe. The book starts with Puddicombe's personal journey from a university student to a Buddhist monk and then becomes an entertaining explainer on how to meditate. If you're thinking about trying mindfulness, this is the perfect introduction.

    Army of None, by Paul Scharre. It's an extremely complicated topic, but Scharre offers clear explanations and presents both the advantages and disadvantages of machine­driven warfare. His fluency with the subject should come as no surprise: he's an ex­soldier who helped draw up the U.S. government's policy on autonomous weapons.

    Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou. Carreyrou gives you the definitive insider's look at the rise and fall of a company. I found myself unable to put it down once I started. This book has everything: magazine cover stories, ruined family relationships, and the failure of a company once valued at nearly $10 billion.

    21 Lessons for the 21st Century, by Yuval Noah Harari. I'm a big fan of everything Harari has written, and his latest is no exception. If 2018 has left you stressed out by the state of the world, 21 Lessons offers a helpful framework for processing the news and thinking about the challenges we face.

    Educated, by Tara West over. Tara never went to school or visited a doctor until she left home at 17. I loved this life story of a young woman whose thirst for learning was so strong that she ended up getting a P.h.D. from Cambridge University.